#the last time i counted WIPs was in 2017? 2018? and it was somewhere around 2000. lemme find the number | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

duhragonball · 4 years

Note

for the writer's ask, chapter 97 of jjl is out, also 12, 20

This was strangely worded, but okay.

12. What part is the hardest to write in your WIP?

So, let me try to explain what I’ve been privately calling “The Shithole”. It’s just a name for the problem I’ve had since December 2018. In terms of chapters, we’re talking approximately about Luffa #109-136.

Basically, I dared myself to try National Novel Writing Month in 2017, and because I didn’t take it lightly, I carefully mapped out about 12 chapter’s worth of story in October of that year. Not exactly an outline, but I decided each chapter should have three main things happening, and wrote down each one like a set of writing prompts. The idea was that if I ever got stuck or bored, I could refer to that list and have a fresh topic ready to go. And it worked out really well.

For Nano 2018, I intended to do the same thing, but I got behind schedule in October 2018, working on #96-100. I had a plan, but not nearly as well-thought out, and that only got me so far. Luffa #101-106 represents the more organized section of that material. During November 2018 I got bored and started skipping around, but I didn’t have a clear plan. Essentially, I was writing scenes to help me figure out what I wanted to do with the story. That’s good for my word-count-- I finished with 60,000 words that year-- but bad for publishing updates.

Ever since that time, I’ve been trying to sort through all those scraps and assemble them into coherent chapters, which usually involves a fair amount of writing in itself. This process ain’t fun, and it really killed my motivation, so when Camp Nano started up in April 2019, I just... compounded my original mistake... writing even more loose scenes to help me figure out where I wanted the story to go. This is one of the reasons I did the Dragon Ball liveblog in 2019. I was really struggling with the writing, and I’ve wanted to do the liveblog for a long time, and I finally reached a point where I decided I needed the diversion. It gave me a different big project to deal with, and it helped me follow the advice from Finding Forrester, where Sean Connery says sometimes you have to type someone else’s words to get you in the mood for typing your own. Describing Akira Toriyama’s story in detail helped me get out of my own head.

I planned to use Nano 2019 to try to sort through my backlog of loose scenes, but I only got so far, but this time I was a little more careful about jumping ahead. I told myself that I would jump ahead, but I had to keep going instead of jumping even further. That helped a lot, as I now have this big 20,000-word file that I won’t be able to post for a while, but when I finally get to it, it shouldn’t need much fixing up.

The Shithole is all the stuff I need to write before I get to that point. I’ve updated Luffa to #118, and I have 119-125 mostly ironed out. I’m trying to get #126-128 settled before the end of May, and then I think the really hard part will be over.

So how did I get into this mess? That’s what I keep trying to figure out, because I never want to come back to this problem again. I suppose the root cause was me deciding to do an arbitrary writing challenge (50,000 words in November) without giving myself the necessary time to prepare. I should have just given myself permission to slow down in the Fall of 2018. Either ditch Nano that year, or ditch what I was working on in the two months that preceded it. But I bit off more than I could chew, and wordcount alone can’t fix that.

Why is it a problem? Well, what worked for me in 2017 was writing it all in order, and planning things out in order. What I’m doing now is like trying to build a house using piece of a half-finished house I built last year. I can’t just pick what kind of shower I want, because I have to work around the toilet and tub I already installed. I’m getting better at this sort of thing, and maybe it’s worthwhile somehow, but it sure isn’t satisfying.

20. What’s a common writing tip that you almost always follow?

“Trust yourself”. Well, maybe that’s not a common tip, but it ought to be, and I think it’s the main one that’s stuck with me through this whole thing.

I started this WIP because I believed so strongly in the idea. Luffa is my Sonichu, and while I’m not delusional enough to expect riches or fame from this story, I do feel like it’s a story that needs to exist, even if it gets swept into the dustbin of history. No one is going to do this for me.

The fic has changed dramatically from the nebulous ideas I had before I started, and sometimes I wonder if I took a wrong turn somewhere, or if I lost my way. But I’m usually very confident in my abilities, and sometimes I have to remind myself of that when I don’t feel that confidence. The talent doesn’t just go away, simply because I’m not as sure of it. When I started the story, I was worried that it wouldn’t hold up to the grandeur I had planned for later. Now I worry that the early chapters were the strongest ones, and I’ve been going in circles ever since. I have no idea how long this story should be or what moves were the wrong ones. Thing is, neither does anyone else. That doesn’t mean I can’t shit the bed with this, but I may as well take my shot. Based on past performance, I think I’ve got a better-than-average chance of making it work.

#ask duhragonball #/#//#///#////#writing #Anonymous

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sp4c3-0ddity · 5 years

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2018 Year-in-Fic

so following @rueitae‘s example (because i’m curious about what i’ve been up to this year too) and building off my 2017 list, a Summary of Fic: 2018 Edition:

(For convenience, you can also find my fic master list here and ao3 account here)

STATS:

Gen/non-plance fics: 15

All right, let’s start with the fic that is not plance from oldest to most recent. An asterisk* denotes if it’s tumblr exclusive

Assassins (3109 words) - Allura tries to go about business as usual, despite their “guest” - Gen, mild Allura/Lotor, canon compliant through season four

Marathon (1081) - Pidge just wants Lance to get off her back about team bonding. / (She has fun anyway.) - Gen, Garrison Trio, pre-canon

Imprinting (540) - A flock of baby "ducks" adopts Hunk as their mother - Gen, canon compliant

Fanfiction (884) - Pidge has a skeleton in her closet, but she made the mistake of saving it to her hard drive - Gen, canon compliant

Everywhere Cats (7363) - A mysterious mishap transforms the Lions of Voltron into...cats, who are more troublesome for their Paladins than for Zarkon's Empire - Gen, canon compliant crack

A Rational Fear (3786) - Alteans aren't as fragile as humans, but they aren't invincible. / Or, Allura's injuries demand a stint in a healing pod; her reluctance can be easily explained - Gen, very mild Allura/Lance, canon compliant

Adrift (1621) - Krolia's translator breaks, but that's not why her sadness is so hard to bear - Gen, pre-canon

Displaced (1318) - Keith confuses his target for someone else. / Neither of them are happy about that - Gen, Keith/Matt, time travel AU

Seek Water’s Run* (~2300) - Gen, Garrison Trio, Abhorsen (Fantasy/Zombie) AU

Crushed* (~900) - Allura/Lance, canon compliant whump

Knowledge or Death, Gun or Blade* (~2000) - Acxa and her Blade trials - Gen, canon divergent/speculative

Pigeon Bait* (~1200) - Hunk rescues a pigeon - Gen, modern/college AU

Price of Pride* (~550) - Matt talks to the Green Lion - Gen, canon compliant

Trickle* (~1000) - Keith wanders a death-scape - Allura/Keith, canon divergent (probably)

Viable Pets* (~2000) - Hunk adopts a space chicken - Gen, dubiously canon compliant

Okay, this is where it might get a little confusing because i’m a dumbass sometimes...

plance fics (not collected): 32 wtf

Ordered from oldest to most recent; does not include anything posted (or to be posted) in this collection; anything exclusive to tumblr is denoted with an asterisk*

Growth (14042) - Lance finds his soulmate; Pidge does not - soulmate AU in canon

Misdirection (5328) - Lance pays attention, and Pidge just may come to enjoy a camping trip - modern AU

Fakeout (7840) - Shenanigans turn dangerous when Lance and Pidge overhear what they should not - canon compliant

A Promise Broken, a Promise Made (5294) - Pidge getting caught up in a project is nothing new, so why, exactly, is Lance so upset this time? - canon compliant

Facing Reality (14182) - Lance skips Fourth of July weekend with his family to spend it with his girlfriend's family instead... / ...only Pidge isn't his girlfriend. And her family is missing. In a completely different reality - modern/roommates AU...of a sort

Spill Your Thoughts (24962) - Mom bought me this notebook hoping I’d “organize my thoughts” or “find therapeutic value in it” or something like that. Personally, I think she’s just hoping I’ll leave it lying around somewhere so she can snoop into what’s going on in my life when I don’t want to tell her. / Mom, if you’re reading this, it’s not going to work because I do not need to keep a journal. So what if I don’t have any friends to vent to? / aka an AU where Pidge's journal is just that and nothing more - modern/high school AU in journal format

Infatuation, Actually (10418) - Pidge never learned basic gun safety. Lance suffers the nonfatal consequences - love spell AU in canon

Fatalistic Daydream (27873) - Being a low-ranking Galra soldier stationed in a virtual backwater isn’t stopping Pidge from finding out what happened to her family. But the secrets she’s keeping from her friend Keith on top of the unwanted attention of an Altean prisoner-of-war are definitely...slowing her down - somewhat Gen, everyone’s an alien AU

Living Nightmare (1892) - Lance's isolation doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon, even if he's out of solitary confinement - outtake of Fatalistic Daydream, technically gen

Frog Pond* (~3000) - Lance kisses a frog on a dare - modern/fantasy AU

Water Rescue (19229) - They start as strangers, but one day they may grow to be something more...familiar - fantasy AU inspired by @rueitae‘s Seasons of Magic

Dip* (~400) - They dance - canon compliant (?)

Sleep Cute* (~450) - Sleepy cuddles - canon compliant (?)

Tidal Lockdown (20937) - An ex-rebel enlists Pidge and Lance to find her missing grandson, but on a planet populated by criminals and where the sun never sets, they can only trust each other... - canon compliant (?)

Double Life (2312) - By day, they’re a secretive criminal-entrapping hacker and her minion; by night, they’re a flashy magician - excuse me, escape artist - and his ‘brilliant’ assistant - modern AU

Spellbound* (~3500) - urban fantasy AU

scaled to size (14747) - Lance returns to Altea triumphant, claiming to have slain a fearsome dragon and intent on collecting his reward from Prince Lotor. But not all is what it seems... / Or: The tale of how Lance survived a dragon despite leaving his heart behind - fantasy AU featuring dragon!Pidge

a prince, missing* (~7000) - Lance is a kidnapped prince and Pidge is his reluctant bodyguard - fantasy AU

a small step and a giant leap (47005, WIP) - Lance wakes when he shouldn’t to an angel of death standing over him. / It’s a first, but it won’t be the last - vague fantasy/modern AU

Full Circle (10275) - “I’m happy to be back, but I kind of don’t want to be.” / Lance, surprised, stared at Pidge. “What do you mean?” / “It feels like the end, doesn’t it? We’re back on Earth - back where we started - and it feels like we’ve come full circle.” / “Yeah, but circles just keep going, don’t they?” / Or, Lance and Pidge return to where they started, but it will never be the same again - canon divergent

Breakfast Date* (~600) - post-canon

(don’t) call an ambulance* (~3700) - modern/mafia AU

Final Lifeline (14466) - Pidge always plays to win, but this time the odds are not in her favor. / And if she loses, Lance may get worse than being fed to the Snick... - canon divergent

Misfortune Favors the Brave (26492, WIP) - Foreknowledge of a death doesn't make it any easier to prevent, but Lance is determined to try. / Even if it means breaking Pidge's heart. - canon divergent

Found and Lost* (~4800) - post-apocalyptic AU featuring android!Pidge

why not?* (~100) - drabble

Dueling Hearts (36213) - The king of a planet that Voltron is attempting to sway to the Coalition misinterprets the nature of Lance’s relationship with Pidge…and promptly challenges him to a duel for her hand in marriage. Lance accepts immediately, much to his teammates’ (especially Pidge’s) mortification. The only problem? Lance still hasn’t figured out how to unlock his bayard’s broadsword form at will - canon divergent

And Everything Was Fine (6416) - Pidge finds the reality where everything turned out fine; needless to say, she’s pissed - mostly Gen, mild post-canon fix-it

No Sky Like Home (6808) - Pidge hesitates to say yes when Lance asks her on a date - post-canon

plance fics in collaboration: 3

And now the fics i did in collaboration

Smack, Kiss, Fall in Love (19589 / 2) - Pidge was only at the Garrison to find her family, not her soulmate. Lance had always had a picture of a his 'perfect' soulmate in mind. / ...until reality smacks them both - soulmate AU in canon done round robin-style with @hailqiqi

To Sail, To Break, To Earn (10268 / 3, WIP) - Cursed by the witch Haggar, Lance, with the crew of the Blade of Marmora, sails the sea and preys on Zarkon's fleet. They are confined to the waves and forbidden from dropping anchor at port. But the deadline draws nearer, when they'll become the soulless servants of the same emperor they forswore, unless they rejoin Zarkon willingly...or earn the heart of a mermaid - in collaboration with @rueitae

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like A Christmas Carol (14384 / 3, WIP) - Lance is no Scrooge, but when he gives up a family vacation and declines an invitation to his friends' holiday gathering, he finds himself the target of a ghostly intervention. / It's a tale as old as time...or as old as the nineteenth century, and if Lance doesn't learn his lesson, he just might be forgotten - post-canon, in collaboration with @hailqiqi and @rueitae

plance fics, collected:

I’m cheating on this one. Referring to my collection Strangeness and Charm, from about Chapter 48 onward are the 2018 chapters. Last year’s word count was 73407 and this year’s word count is (with the exception of some fic saved as chapters not yet posted) 200794. here are the longer/more notable (in my opinion at least) samples that probably should’ve been posted separately:

Future (~6000) - prompted historical/arranged marriage AU

Captive (~5200) - moderately gen AU where Pidge, Lance, and Hunk are captured by pirates

Another Time (~3700) - reincarnation AU in conjunction with canon

Masquerade* (~1300) - super tease-y fantasy AU and if you don’t have the song from Phantom of the Opera stuck in your head from just reading that title i envy you

Tease (~800) - “If you love it so much then why don’t you marry it?” - canon compliant

A Pirate’s Life for Me (~4000) - Pidge is captured by space pirates - canon compliant

Absence Makes the Heart Grow (Fonder) (~7200) - Pidge finds Lance on Earth - canon divergent AU that was hilariously accurate in retrospect

like a masochistic moth to dragonflame (~3200) - the aftermath of the battle against the Coranic Dragon - piklavar, Monsters & Mana AU

Steal to Save (~800) - Pidge “loses” her glasses - canon compliant

to trust a thief (~3800) - followup to other piklavar fic

Deadline (~1000) - Stressful countdown to Lance confessing - canon compliant

Glint of Silver (~5200) - Pidge’s double life just might endanger her werewolf roommate - roommates/urban fantasy AU

masks for two* (1500) - Lady Katie learns she and her fiance have more in common than expected - historical/thieves AU

Bad Press* (~1500) - It’s not easy pretending to date your celebrity friend - fake dating AU

a personal mission* (~780) - Lance is on a mission - canon compliant (?)

the eve of it all* (~1800) - Lance stands Pidge up on game night - season eight fix-it, canon divergent

okay that ended up being way longer than i expected...

BREAKDOWN:

Ship breakdown:

plance wins so easily it’s not even funny. oddly enough considering my current feelings on the pairing Allura/Lance takes second place (though only by very weak implication in one case and...by a very wide margin). and then there are the other mostly implied (Allura/Lotor, Keith/Matt) that occur once each plus an Allura/Keith fic and a gen fic that’s also technically Krolia/Keith’s dad

and then there’s my apparent thing for Hunk bonding with birds

Character breakdown:

Pidge and Lance because *jazz hands* plance. i suppose Hunk and Allura may be split for third place

Characters that had the main focus:

*sweats* hilariously i think it might be...Lance?? i feel like many of my longer fics (whether one-shots or multichapter) end up in his point of view, notably a small step and Misfortune. Pidge is an easy second place though, and which of the two i favor changes. Pidge is, in a sense, a little easier to write but Lance, depending on the tone i’m going for, can be wild fun because he’s so ridiculous sometimes

SPECIFICS:

Best title?

uh...i’m capable of having decent titles?? thing is, my titles tend to be on the nose or else something i forget i need till the point i’m posting a fic, but i like Everywhere Cats partly because it was very much inspired by a simple children’s song i remember my sister playing when she first started learning piano. i also like Facing Reality as a title because of the word play i can be clever

...okay i’m going to stop here because i keep looking back and realizing i like more of those than i thought i did

Worst title?

many of them are so...plain that i’m not sure i can pick just one. sure, they tell you what the story is about, but there’s nothing hidden in them...they’re so bland. throw a dart at a board with all my one-word titles and you’ll probably hit something

Best first line?

let’s go with a masochistic moth to dragonflame:

Pike is smitten the moment he sees her, and it only grows worse when the words family heirloom cross her lips.

Worst first line?

i think my first lines in general are...decent?? nothing spectacular, just meant to convey what’s going on and why it’s important (or that’s what i try to do at least), but out of laziness i’m going with the one from Everywhere Cats:

Hunk settled his helmet onto his head as he walked into the Yellow Lion’s hangar, feeling wonderfully light at the prospect of this mission.

Best last line?

Adrift made me so emotional when i was writing it that i have to use this one:

“Love,” [Krolia] said, “can you turn off the lights? I’m showing Keith the stars.”

Worst last line?

i tend to end my fics rather abruptly (i really really hate unnecessary bits tacked on when everything is pretty much resolved) and/or on dialogue and i’m usually thoughtful of how i end it so i’m not even gonna skim through the rest of my fics because this one from Assassins is just so boring:

She followed General Sahr inside, and this time both Coran and Lotor came with her.

GENERAL:

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

yes, yes i did. also looking back at last year’s list i didn’t even get any of the goals i set accomplished...whoops??

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

uh...Keith/Matt i guess?? maybe Allura/Lance too because i really don’t like that pairing now (though i used to be indifferent or else somewhat like it) so it’s like a retrospective “well i can’t believe i managed to write them as a romantic pairing”

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

always will i answer this question with scaled to size because it actually does make me happy, especially thinking of all the pain and suffering i’m only somewhat exaggerating i went through while conceiving of it thanks to a computer mishap (and, tbh, my own neglect), and ultimately all it took to revive it was a timely prompt from the Pidgance Positivity Discord and dare i say it ended up far better than planned??

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

on ao3 by kudos and excluding my collection that’s Smack, Kiss, Fall in Love (i can’t tell if it’s the magic of collaborating with someone like @hailqiqi or the allure of a soulmate AU or a fic with that many chapters). most by comments/bookmarks and second most by kudos is Dueling Hearts.

by notes on tumblr would be Sleep Cute

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

oh gosh i don’t know. throw a dart at my gen fics and you’ll probably hit one?? or else To Sail, To Break, To Earn, my collaboration with @rueitae, could use lots more love i thought you guys liked mermaids

Story that could have been better?

all of them??

Sexiest story?

uh well i’ve never posted anything more explicit than simple foreplay so i suppose that would be Final Lifeline but i also want to make note of like a masochistic moth to dragonflame because i think i did well with a touch of Unresolved Sexual Tension and Bad Press was almost candid about that sort of thing and Lance almost propositioned Pidge by accident

Saddest story?

it’s probably a toss-up between Final Lifeline (major character death on top of a possible awful future), Misfortune (predicted character death), and a small step (they can’t really be together)

Most fun?

Bad Press was a riot while i was working on it. Everywhere Cats was a lot of fun too, as was scaled to size (though tbh i have fun writing a vast majority of my fics...)

Story with single sweetest moment?

nothing really stands out to me at the moment so this is mostly a cop-out (and Pidge and Lance are at their best when they’re teasing each other anyway) from scaled to size:

“Is there…any room for the brave and dashing knight that rescued you in that future?” Lance whispered.

“Maybe, if you find him.”

“Hey!” Lance exclaimed, pulling away from him slightly.

Pidge snickered and wrapped her arms around his neck. “But there’s room for the brave boy that grew into his too-big britches.”

“Yes, but I’m a knight now too,” Lance pointed out.

“Should I call you Sir Lance now?” Pidge raised an eyebrow while one of her hands wandered into his hair and pulled his head down. “But I think I like Lance better…”

Their noses brushed, and Pidge’s warm breath caressed his face.

Lance’s eyes slid shut when he kissed her.

Hardest story to write?

most likely Displaced because i’m not really into Keith/Matt as a romantic pairing (and it ended up more gen anyway) and i wasn’t really enamored by the idea so i was mostly just trying to wrap up what i had without getting into the concept too much

Easiest/most fun story to write?

the night i bolted out of bed possessed by a spark of inspiration thanks to this art to hammer out Masquerade will forever live in infamy

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

i don’t think so??

Most overdue story?

scaled to size if only because of the frustration i associate with its inception ;_;

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

collaborations, for one, not that it’s especially risky, but i’d never done one so that was fun!! Smack, Kiss, Fall in Love oddly enough validated by typical “write on impulse” style though...

for another, i published a fic in a zine!! also i participated in a Bang and a gift exchange, neither of which i’d done before

also posting the start of a multichapter fic not yet finished is a risk that hasn’t quite payed off yet *sweats*

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

no idea. i’m decidedly not a very goal-oriented person, but for now i think i’ll keep it simple and finish my four dubiously active WIPs, write something amazing for the Plance Mini Bang (which i’m also mod-ing oh boy), and outline as often as possible to ease the writing

#qna #reem writes fic #...yikes this is long #and i got really lazy at the end and put less thought into those last questions

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batik96 · 6 years

Text

Writing ...

I wrote a few words to end 2017. I wrote a few words to start 2018. I found that, if I were to write 43 words each day in 2018, that would be 15,695 words written by year’s end. That would please me.

Much of February was a wash, writing-wise. Now I’m trying to salvage March.

When last we left off, I had written 3,116 words in 2018, for a then-89-word daily average. Even now, if my calculator is to be believed, I have a 44.5-word daily average, which still surpasses my goal of 43 words a day. (Not sure how I managed that, but I won’t complain.) Going forward ...

March 11, 2018: Today, I have written 140 words, for a total of 3,256 words for the year -- and a 46.5-word daily average.

March 24, 2018: I wrote 1,055 words today. That makes 4,311 words for the year -- and a 51.9-word daily average. (It did nothing to help my nearly 2-year-old WIP, but I have written something postable -- soon, I promise -- for the first time in months. It feels good.

April 8, 2018: I wrote yesterday. It’s hard to quantify, because I really was rewriting a small section for which I found a better (I think) take. If I check just that section, I wrote 253 words. But it replaces a section of 247 words and is largely similar, except with a few key word changes. So the 6-word increase could well be accurate. So, I guess that puts me up to 4,317 words for the year. Or a 44.5-word daily average. Which is still above my 43-word goal, so I guess I’m managing. Though I really hope to get some other projects out of the way soon so I can focus more easily on the words.

May 6, 2018: I wrote 444 words today. I’m not sure any of it is any good. Or if it’s all really boring. (It seems pretty mundane.) But I wrote. (Which is a good thing, since I’m signed up for an exchange. Yikes!) So that’s 4,761 words for the year, or 37.785 words a day. I’ve officially fallen below my daily goal. Time remains my biggest constraint. (I feel as if I’m lacking ideas, but I also feel I’d have more ideas if I had more time.) But I expect the exchange-fic deadline to help resolve that, since it pretty well guarantees I have to write at least 600 more words -- and soon. (Plus, that’s 444 words of “they haven’t even met yet”. I still need words for “they met and it was amazing”.) Onward!

May 7, 2018: I added another 276 words today. For a year-to-date total of 5,037 and a daily average of 39.66. Still not back to my 43-word-a-day goal, but I’m seeing progress, so that’s something.

May 10, 2018: Another 174 words added. For a year-to-date total of 5,211 words and a daily average of 39.778. It’s a very minor increase from my previous daily average, and it’s not 43 words. But it’s not nothing. (I think this confirmed for me, though, that I write better when no one is around. Or, at least, when my husband isn’t around. He doesn’t really like it when my attention is elsewhere, especially if he doesn’t know where. That makes it really hard for me to relax enough to write. I apparently can write more in 10 minutes with him out of the house than I can in an hour when he’s around.)

May 12: I have written 647 words today. (In addition to tweaking some of the words I’d already written.) Still a long way to go, but ... progress. That makes 5,858 words for the year and a daily average of 44.37 words -- officially back above my 43-words-a-day goal.

May 19: Over the past few days, I’ve written 1,643 words, for a year-to-date total of 7,501 words. That’s a 53.96-word daily average. And I believe it’s actually something completed. Not the now 2-year-old WIP, or the thing I was writing on May 12 (which has stalled), but still a viable, whole thing that I hope to post soon. (When I started this on Jan. 1, I noted that 43 words a day would give me 15,695 words by year’s end. I’m almost to my halfway-point goal of 7,847.5 words with 42 days before the halfway point in the year. Considering how little writing I managed in 2017 and much of 2016, I’m pretty happy with that. I hope I can keep it up!)

May 25: I decided to rewrite a chunk of a fic, to see if I end up liking the way it goes any better. (It’s not that I don’t like it, but it was supposed to include smut and now it may not and I’m not sure the initial take was enough to keep it from being mind-numbingly dull without the smut. I’m hoping the rewrite helps with that -- and also maybe inspires me to decide I can manage the smut after all.) Anyway. In the course of the rewrite, I’ve added 571 words this morning. That gives me a year-to-date total of 8,072 words and a daily average of 55.6689 words.

May 26: I’ve written 589 words this morning, part of a 945-word doc that I’m not sure I ever recognized as words written because it is more head canon/fic idea/fic outline than actual fic. But its 900+ words. And it feels good. So I’m going to claim them. Those 945 words bring my yearly total up to 9,017. That’s a daily average of 61.76 words. (If I were to maintain that pace, I could write 22,500+ words this year.) Considering how scarce words have been for me over the past two years, actually having ideas feels great, even if I do still need to work on making the ideas into actual fic. And even if writing actual fic still is like pulling teeth (without proper dental equipment).

June 3: Tracking my words at the moment is complicated. I had 2,100 words written. I added more, deleted some, reworked a bit. So I’m not absolutely certain how many actual new words I’ve written in the past week. But, the doc started at 2,100 counted words and now has 6,158 words, so I know I can claim at least 4,058 words since May 26. That gives me a year-to-date total of 13,075 words -- more than I had in 2016 and 2017 combined -- and a daily average of 84.9 words.

June 10: I’m losing track of my word count, simply because, well, I’m writing. I’m working on one thing, in particular, and I am kind of in the editing phase, the phase where I change this chunk of words to a different chunk of words. Sometimes it’s a bigger chunk, sometimes smaller. But that 6,100-word doc is now more than 6,800 words, so that’s at least 700 words in the past week. That brings my year-to-date total somewhere around 13,775, for a daily average of 85.5 words. I also posted something (that made it into a previous word count) this past week, which felt really good.

Aug. 25: It’s been a while, but I wrote 633 words last night. I’ve managed today to add 339 words. I think I’m a bit behind on my 43-words-a-day bid, so I’m just going to go with “972 words in two days is not a bad word count” and leave it at that.

Aug. 27: I wrote a few more words yesterday -- 49, to be precise. And, thanks to a bit of as-I-was-falling-asleep inspiration/texting-myself-so-I-wouldn’t-forget, I have written 135 words this morning. Neither is much, especially considering the 49 words are the result of a 4-hour time period during which I could have been writing and simply couldn’t find the words. But 184 words is more than I had two days ago, and 1,156 is more than I had four days ago. Baby steps.

That’s also a year-to-date word total of around 14,931 and a daily average of 62.47 words. Which is stunning. It’s been so long since I wrote that I assumed I was far, far behind on my 43-words-a-day goal. And I’m not -- by a lot. In fact, when I started this at the beginning of the year, I did the math and figured that 43 words a day, by year’s end, would mean I had written 15,695 words. Now? With 126 days left in the year? I only need to write another 764 words to meet my goal for the year. Granted, there’s still time for me to be hit by a total lack of inspiration and miss my goal. but 764 words seems do-able in the next four months, especially since I’ve written more than that in the past four days.

Aug. 29: Another 155 words added. For a year-to-date total of 15,086 or 62.6 words a day. Slowly. (Not surely, just slowly.)

Aug. 30: I’ve written 267 words, and it’s not yet 8 a.m. That makes 15,353 for the year, or 63.44 words a day during 242 days. That leaves 121 days in the year to reach my 15,695 goal. That’s 342 words I need to reach my goal. Still not going to call it a done deal. But I’m thrilled that it seems attainable. That’s less than 3 words a day needed between now and year’s end.

Sept. 3: I’ve managed 236 words written this morning, in not that much time. So I’ll take it. That’s 15,589 words for the year, or 106 words shy of my goal for the year. That’s a 63.39-word average over 246 days. I now have 119 days in which to write 106 words. If I don’t meet my goal, I’m going to be bummed!

Oct. 9: It’s been a while. And I may have managed a word or two -- a literal word or two, not an actual few paragraphs being passed off as “a word or two” -- since last I updated this post. But they truly were to few to even bother attempting to count. Today? I have written 468 words. During the past week or so, in single sentences or -- sometimes -- phrases, I have written more. Combine today’s count with that and I’m up to 744 words in the past couple of weeks. Which brings my word count for the year to 16,333 words in 282 -- a 57.9-word daily average. I’ve now broken my writing goal for the year with more than two months to go. I’m very happy with that! Now the goal is to finish my current endeavor. (I’m not going to say “finish the WIP,” because there’s no way the one I consider my WIP is going to be done by the end of the year. At least not without me finding someone to subsidize it for the next two months while I take a leave of absence from my job and move to a remote cabin with an excellent internet connection but far away from my family.) (The current “endeavor” is more realistically attainable!)

Oct. 15: Since last I updated, I have written 549 words. I’m not going to vouch for its quality -- I’m so busy trying to take things one step at a time, just get me from Point A to Point B and I’ll worry about Point C later, that I’m not sure if the words are actually decent or just merely functional. But they are words, and I trust my betas to tell me if they suck. Meanwhile, that brings my word count up to 16,882 words in 288 days, for a 58.6-word daily average.

Oct. 20: I added another 103 words today. It’s not much, but it was the 103 words that allowed me to finish that particular scene, so it feels like a lot. And, technically, it’s more than double my 43-words-a-day goal! That brings me up to 16,985 in 293 days, or a 57.9-word daily average.

Dec. 2: Good grief. I went the entire month of November without writing a word. (Well, I wrote 183 words outlining what I needed to write, but I didn’t actually write those words, so the 183 words don’t count for the purpose of this specific count.) Happily, December is off to a better start. I just added 106 words to my current writing effort. There’s still a long way to go and I’m not sure I’ll manage to finish it by year’s end. But every little bit helps. That brings my year-to-date total up to 17,091 words in 336 days. That’s a 50.866-word daily average.

Dec. 7: Another 130 words. So, 17,221 words in 341 days, for a daily average of 50.5 words.

Dec. 16: Another 550 words. So, 17,771 words in 350 days, for a daily average of 50.77 words. Still not close to finishing this particular piece, but closer than I was 550 words ago!

Dec. 22: Another 709 words, for a 356-day total of 18,480 and a daily average of 51.9 words. This one is both going exactly as I intended/expected and surprising me at every turn.

#Batik96 babbles about life #and writing

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ncfan-1 · 6 years

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2017 Fic Retrospective

This was another difficult year for fic writing, but many of the fics were rewarding to write.

I am calculating total word count a bit differently this year. I didn’t write as much fic as I have in certain past years, but I wrote a lot of meta, and I devoted a lot of time to writing that meta, probably as much time as I devoted to writing fic (One of my meta posts wound up being over 10,000 words long). So while the meta I wrote isn’t going to factor into the count for total number of completed stories, any meta post I published that’s over 500 words long is going to factor into the word count.

Total Number of Completed Stories: 36, with 32 posted to AO3 and 4 of them posted to my Dreamwidth, but not to AO3. 34 of them are complete, while two are WIPs, though I don’t know when I’m going to write more for them; one of them is just a conceptual prologue, with the story idea needing to be reworked, and the other was just sort of flying off half-cocked because, uh, reasons.

Total Word Count:

For fic: 159,867 words; 143,525 (AO3) + 16,342 (Dreamwidth) For meta: 92,704 words over 66 meta posts. Total: 252,571 words

Fandoms Written In: Star Wars, Star Wars: Rogue One, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars: Rebels, Umineko no naku koro ni, Star Wars: KOTOR II, The Silmarillion, Lord of the Rings, Samurai Jack, Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi, Batman, DuckTales (2017), Natsume Yuujinchou, Star vs. The Forces of Evil, OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes, Gotham (Fox)

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted? Less. Part of that is because I went back to college this year, but part of it is just… again, reasons.

What’s your own favorite story of the year?

As usual, I am going to do a top five instead of just picking one. So here is my top five, in particular order:

1. All Held in Doubt: Writing from Star’s perspective was satisfying, because she’s someone who I think perceives her surroundings in something somewhat close to the same way I do. Portraying Eclipsa as the most ambiguous character imaginable, with Star both being ambivalent about her and wanting to trust her (but knowing she should withhold judgment for the time being) was a fun challenge. I also like the imagery I used in this fic.

2. Simple Wants: Tar-Vanimeldë is a troll, a troll, a troll.

3. Professor Venomous vs. Roller Skates: Trying to guess what Professor Venomous would act like when he wasn’t under stress, wasn’t annoyed and was spending time relaxing with his kid (let’s be real, that’s what Fink is to him, even if he says she’s his minion) was fun. Writing his incredibly jaundiced assessment of that disco-themed skating rink was also fun.

4. a fish, floundering on dry land: When writing Tolkien fic, I rarely venture into the LoTR side of the legendarium, but this was fun. Especially intercutting it with a version of the tale of Imrazôr and Mithrellas.

5. Game Night in Cell Block A: This is a fic series, rather than a single fic, so maybe this is cheating. But the three fics in the series have a unifying theme, namely the evolving relationship between Sabine Wren and Fenn Rau, between ‘The Protector of Concord Dawn’ and ‘Imperial Supercommandos’, and a little while afterwards. I got to play around with head canon and world-building, and an interesting character dynamic. Also, I couldn’t choose between the three of them.

Did you take any writing risks this year? Again, unless you count writing for new fandoms and writing about incredibly minor characters very few, if any people, care about, no, not really.

Do you have any fanfic or ofic goals for the New Year? Will 2018 finally be the year in which I give no fucks? Well, 2017 was the year I acquired my first hate-ship, it was the year I started shipping Reylo and in the last few days of the year I began writing a multi-chapter fic for my Silm crackotp. I’m going to take these as good omens for the new year. I’m going to write more of the crackship, more of my other favorite ships, and just more of the stuff I want to write.

My best story of this year: That’s hard to say. Really hard to say. I have a lot of fics this year that I really liked, but I liked a lot of them nearly equally. I’m going to pick one that I didn’t post in the top 5, and say Not As You Remember. Writing Ursa Wren was an interesting exercise.

My most popular story of this year: By hits and kudos, Somewhere Else to Go, with 476 hits and 69 kudos. By comment threads, Far From Home, with six comment threads. Overall, I’d say the former was more popular. People seem to want to see Lena and Mrs. Beakley interact.

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe: Brave Face. I know Aravir is literally just a name on a genealogical chart, but it was still a bit disappointing that this fic got so little attention. I’m not including the fics I posted to Dreamwidth and not AO3 in this calculation. They’ve gotten no attention, but I posted them only to Dreamwidth precisely because I only wanted the people who knew enough about me to go looking through my Dreamwidth to see them. (My Dreamwidth account is open to the public, but I don’t widely advertise it.)

Most fun story to write: Probably a tie between All Held in Doubt, Professor Venomous vs. Roller Skates, and In Service of the Republic.

Story with the single sexiest moment: That’s a laugh.

Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: what you become shifted my perceptions of a character who’s halfway to being an OC (she’s a textual ghost, which means she must necessarily exist, but has never been elaborated on in canon), so yeah, this one definitely qualifies.

Hardest story to write: Under the Surface and Bookends are tied for this one.

Biggest Disappointment: Probably just beneath the surface. There isn’t a lot of fic about this particular part of the old EU, and not a lot of fic about Nomi Sunrider, but I had hoped that I could write something more engaging than this wound up being.

Biggest Surprise: There were a lot of surprises this year. I got into a lot of new fandoms this year, including a few I didn’t think I ever would. Star vs. the Forces of Evil, for instance. I’d honestly found the ads I’d seen for that show obnoxious, and thought they set the tone for the show; I got into the show because I heard about Eclipsa, and she is just my kind of character. Never have I been so glad to be wrong about a show’s ads setting the tone for the show itself. But I do not hope to know again tops either of the Star vs. fics I wrote this year, because I typically need to like a canon a lot better than I like Gotham to want to write fic for it.

#Fic retrospective #Fanfic #Writing #May 2018 be the year I give no fucks

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memswrites · 6 years

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2017 Fic Writing Round-Up

AO3 Total Word Count: 23,955 Overall Word Count: -kept poor track of that this year-

Word Count By Fandom:

Bungou Stray Dogs: 17,773

91 Days: 2,040

Yuri! On Ice: 1,798

Boku no Hero Academia: 1,221

Alien/Prometheus: 1,123

Fics Posted

Finished One Shots & Drabbles: 50

Posted on AO3

Posted on RP blog

Posted on memswrites

WIP Fics: 1

AO3 - Sugar & Spice | Bungou Stray Dogs | Fitzsushi

Fics Unseen

WIP Fics: 6

Fandom Events Written For:

Soukoku Week

Port Mafia Week

Otayuri AU Zine

OWC Gift Exchange

Voltron AU Zine

Q&A

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought this year, less, or about what you predicted in January?

I hadn’t actually planned on writing any fic in January tbh but here we are-

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?

Bungou Stray Dogs; Fitzsushi. I also wrote a different brand of dark than I’m used to when working on Necron, so there’s that.

What’s your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?

Probably Reverence, because it’s a concept I’ve never written before and I got to play around with a character that I’ve never written before.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

I don’t know if it’s so much as risks, but I played around with style and trying to use different types of those literary devices they tried to teach you about in school. I learned that I work surprisingly well with present tense... As well as that I actually have the skill to write longer pieces if I choose to do that in the future.

Your best story this year.

Uhm. Frick. I’m gonna go with Nostalgie. I really loved the concept around it and it’s just. Pretty.

Your most popular fic of the year.

Noise Maker. Which was a god damn shocker, let me tell you.

Story that’s most under appreciated.

I don’t really think any of my fics are under appreciated; I love the feedback I’ve gotten this year. That being said, I guess the stuff written for rare pairs has gotten less traction, but they’re rare pairs, so. XD

Most fun story to write.

Paint Drops, easily. I die every time for domestic SKK.

Story with the single sexiest moment.

Roulette, but that’s because I’m garbage and have a thing for gun play in fics.

Most “Holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you” story.

...Necron.

Story that shifted your own perceptions of the characters.

Mmm. I want to say any of the drabbles that I wrote for my Akutagawa blog, mainly because it forced me to seriously consider and think about his motivations and his perceptions of the world.

Hardest story to write.

Roulette. I kept having issues trying to stay in character while also getting what I wanted out of the fic itself. I think it turned out pretty bangin’ in the end though.

Biggest disappointment.

In general I feel that some (a lot) of my drabble endings feel rushed/incomplete. It’s something I’d like to change in 2018 and improve on.

Biggest surprise.

Noise Maker’s reception in the BNHA fandom. Hooooboiii.

Most unintentionally telling story.

Probably Nostalgie. Or Aftercare. I think both of those pieces in particular highlighted a lot of things that I hadn’t intentionally gone in to do but I liked the results nonetheless.

Favorite opening line(s:)

Their red string of fate was less a string, and more a blood-soaked cloth that bound them tight to one another. -Metem Psychosia

They call him the Mafia’s Dog. Rabid. Wild. An attack beast with a scent for blood. -III

Favorite closing line(s:)

He’d never shared a bed before. He wouldn’t be doing it again. But he’d do it for the moment. -Ephemeros

What was this woman, he wondered, to look like that and look at him – and smell like comfort instead of rot? -Sakura

Favorite five lines from anywhere.

Avilio makes a point of withdrawing the gun, slow, letting his lips cling to the metal like he’s sad to let it go, like he wants it in his mouth and down his throat and choking out his life. Spit trails along the barrel, slick and shiny, leaving a bridge of it from those longing lips right down to the muzzle. Slight, almost not even there, the tip of his tongue flicks along the end of it, circled around where a bullet could have killed him, but didn’t. -Roulette

The ease of falling into that emotionless trap should have washed over him. Feeling off, pleasure on. Plenty of people did it; it wasn’t that hard. He should have been able to give into the ego-boost this fucker’s tone should have given him, but it sinks in deep like a knife through ribs that it’s not an ego boost he wants - especially not from someone who, as Chuuya looks down into those listless blue eyes, only covets him for the heat between his legs and little else. He can’t fucking do it. He’s always wanted more. -Easy

Master told him to end them all. To feast. A decadent banquet had been laid before his feet in the form of the weak and the damned, and at Master’s insistence he was to devour each like he was starved. Send them down the gullet of the void… Appease the once-contained monster that sang sweet carnage in his head. It had been held at bay through his control alone for so long… Yet his Master had freed It and stripped It of inhibition.More, It wanted. More, more, more – And Master told him to listen to It, so listen he did.Those black-spire buildings rang familiar somewhere between the hunger and the order, but it wasn’t enough to jar him from his Purpose. He was a tool… He was servile. A monster with a loosened chain that led right back to Death itself and Death was greedy in its pursuits. Life was little more than sustenance, after all. -Tumblr Drabble

The air was still, a calm death that settled thick within the walls of the warehouse, a claustrophobic fog that threatened to suffocate. In the center, sat a boy, with blood up to his ankles. His cloak was too big for him, swallowing his body in a trembling shroud, but it wasn’t the body itself that trembled. The fibers of the cloak vibrated, a rhythmic undulation of something trying to get back out - the beast within he’d tried so desperately to control, but some rabid dogs are too feral to contain. He could hear it, in the back of his mind. It was the ravenous snarl of that thing inside him, always hungry, always laying in wait to consume, wanting its chance to devour. Insatiable should have been its name, but it deigned to be called Rashomon from the moment he had discovered it, and from the moment he had given it name it’d tormented him with its presence. He couldn’t control it. He never had. He never would. -Tumblr Drabble

Chuuya pauses his bite, and looks over at Dazai. The bags that were there while he was sleeping still hang under his eyes, somehow more than they had before. Last time they had gone through with Corruption, it had been out of necessity, and it hadn’t left Chuuya looking so weary. What a waste of the ability, doing it for show, letting it drag out the way it had.Dazai can tell that Chuuya’s not particularly convinced by his assertion, though he supposes that’s fine; he’s not convinced that Mori took it to heart, either, and can see it in the shrug that Chuuya gives before he goes back to his soup.“You’re going to unravel those if you keep picking at them, you useless mummy.” -Aftercare

Top five scenes you’d have illustrated from anywhere.

^everything up there tbhhh.

Fic writing goals for next year.

Finish up all my WIPs.

Actually get through a multi chap fic you COWARD.

HIT 100,000 WORD COUNT, NO BIGGIE-SMALLS.

#chit chat #kinda did some extra/some different things but yolo

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